Chowbus POS

Chowbus POS integrates with 7shifts to sync actual sales, labor, employee, and tip data. Connecting Chowbus POS to 7shifts gives managers real-time visibility into sales and labor costs, and enables tip pooling and payroll workflows.

Things to Know

• Access to this feature may require an upgrade from your existing plan.

Add the Integration

1. From your Chowbus POS, navigate to the Team Management section in the left-hand menu.
2. Click on 7shifts.
3. Review the permissions that will be granted and click Authorize. You will be redirected to the 7shifts website.
   
4. If you have multiple 7shifts accounts, select the correct one from the Accounts dropdown menu.
5. Click Submit. You will be returned to the Chowbus portal.
6. On the integration page, complete the setup checklist.
   

Employee and Role Mapping

Mapping connects locations, departments, roles, and employees between Chowbus POS and 7shifts to ensure labor data flows to the correct profiles. When mapping is complete, it reduces integration warnings and prevents issues when running payroll.

Map your store location to the corresponding location in 7shifts.

1. Click the Map Location button.
2. A pop-up window will appear. Select the correct store location from the Location dropdown menu.
3. Click Confirm. A "Location saved successfully" message will appear.

Map your Chowbus departments (e.g., Front of House, Back of House) to your departments in 7shifts.

1. Click Map Departments. For each Chowbus department, choose one of the following:
   • Map to an existing 7shifts department: Select the matching department from the dropdown.
   • Create a new department in 7shifts: Click Add to 7shifts in that row to automatically create and map the department.
   • Ignore the department: Select Ignore from the dropdown if the department should not sync.
2. Click Save in the top right corner once all departments are mapped or ignored.

Map the employee roles in Chowbus (e.g., Cashier, Driver, Staff) to their equivalents in 7shifts. This ensures that employees' scheduled roles and actual clocked-in roles are consistent.

1. Click the Map Roles button.
2. For each Chowbus Role listed, use the dropdown and choose the corresponding role from 7shifts.
3. If a role in Chowbus should not be synced, you can choose to Ignore it.
4. After mapping all necessary roles, click Save.

Map your employee profiles between Chowbus and 7shifts.

1. Click the Map Employees button.
2. You will see a list of all your employees in Chowbus. You can map them individually, but the fastest method is to use the batch-add feature.
3. To add employees to 7shifts in bulk:
   1. Check the boxes next to the names of all employees you wish to add to 7shifts.
   2. A button will appear at the top of the list: Batch Add to 7shifts (#). Click this button.
   3. The system will automatically create profiles for these employees in 7shifts and map them.
4. For employees who already exist in both systems, you can map them manually by selecting their name from the 7shifts Employee dropdown in their row.
5. If certain profiles (e.g., test accounts) should not be synced, you can choose to Ignore them.
6. Once all necessary employees are mapped or ignored, click Save.

Actual Sales and Forecasting

Once your integration has been activated, your real-time sales data will be enabled by default. 7shifts will also use those Actual Sales values to populate Projected Sales, allowing you to create schedules based on those projections. These will become more accurate over time as more data is available.

After activating your integration, please note that sales projections may not appear immediately. It can take approximately 1–2 weeks from the activation date for sales projections to become visible, covering up to four weeks into the future. These will become more accurate over time as more data is available.

You can manually import sales data for more immediate projections. To do this, import hourly sales each day or individual receipts consistently. You can learn more about sales projections here.

• Both 7shifts and Chowbus POS must be configured with the same time zone and workday hours (5:00 AM to 5:00 AM).
• It may take a few hours for the system to bring in previous sales. If sales data does not appear initially, check back in a few hours.
• It takes approximately 1 to 2 weeks of data collection for initial sales projections to appear.
• 7shifts will sync sales data into the Dashboard, Manager Log Book, Actuals Report, and the Labor Budget Tool.

Actual Labor and Tips

Chowbus POS integrates with 7shifts for Actual Labor. This means that your actual labor costs will be pulled into 7shifts. Once enabled, your actual labor costs will be displayed on the Dashboard allowing you to compare Sales vs. Labor. You'll see the labor numbers update on the Dashboard on the day you enabled Chowbus POS Actual Labor.

• When an employee clocks in, their open punches are immediately sent to 7shifts.
• Time punch edits should be made directly in your POS to avoid data conflicts. If you have enabled 3rd Party Punches, edit the punch in 7shifts instead.

Including Tips in Payroll

The Chowbus POS integration supports the following tip sources:

• CC Tips (Credit Card Tips)
• Auto-gratuity
• Declared Tips

The Chowbus integration supports automated tip collection for use with 7shifts Tip Pooling. This data feeds into custom pooling rules based on hours worked, points, or percentages.

For a step-by-step setup, see Tip Pooling for Chowbus POS.

To ensure these tips are included in your reports and payroll (7shifts Payroll and external exports), you must configure your tip calculation settings. Follow the steps in Tips: Include Tip Calculations.

Employee Sync

Chowbus POS syncs employee data into 7shifts only. Employee profiles created or updated in Chowbus POS flow into 7shifts through the mapping process completed during setup. Changes made in 7shifts do not sync back to Chowbus POS.

• Use the Batch Add to 7shifts feature during setup to create and map multiple employee profiles at once.
• For employees who already exist in both systems, map them manually using the 7shifts Employee dropdown during the mapping step.
• Unmapped employees will not have their labor data sync correctly. Review the Warnings tab in Time Clocking regularly to identify and resolve mapping gaps.

Integration Warnings in Time Clocking

Once your POS labor is syncing into 7shifts, you will see a Warnings tab when reviewing your current pay period. This tab highlights punches missing a role in your POS/7shifts labor data that may need attention before running payroll.

These warnings appear directly in Time Clocking > Pay Periods > Warnings, helping you quickly identify and fix issues with labor data flowing in from the POS.

You can resolve most issues right from the Warnings tab, and you can still close your pay period even if some warnings remain.

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